Chocca Mocha Cupcakes

Chocolately cupcakes with a hint of coffee, iced with fudgy chocolate buttercream

Chocca Mocha Cupcakes

Cupcakes are always a good option for my Seniors Lunch Club group, and chocolate never fails. I added a touch of coffee to the flavouring to make it mocha and that extra deep bitterness. I also added some chocolate chips to the cupcake mix to give a bit of texture and more chocolatiness. The buttercream and chocolate icing was piped on with a fine star nozzle and I couldn’t resist a bit of golden glitter on top.

We had a bit of a party this week, to celebrate end of term, as we’re having a two-week break. We had a sandwich platter; I made some sausage rolls and things on sticks and we played Charades. I chose movies/books/films/TV themes that I thought our group would know, people picked one out of a bag and had to act it out. Some of our group were quite nervous about acting in front of the group but they all got into it quite quickly and we were roaring with laughter at the performances. “Jaws” was easy to guess, “My Fair Lady” was quite tricky to act, and “Coronation Street” stumped both the actor and the audience. It’s a great game to play with any age group and prompts all sorts of discussions too. “Dr. No” started a debate about which is our favourite Bond actor and which is our favourite Bond movie – members got quite heated with opinions about Roger Moore/Sean Connery and went away determined to watch the movies again and re-think their all time favourites for a Bond-themed session in the Autumn.
 
Makes 24 cupcakes                         Timings:   An hour to make the batch of cupcakes, then time to cool and about 20 minutes to ice them

• 200g salted butter
  
• 200g caster sugar
  
• 185g self raising flour
  
• 20g cocoa powder
  
• 10g coffee granules
  
• 4 medium eggs
  
• 1 tablespoon Camp Coffee Essence
  
• 100g milk chocolate chips

For the icing:  200g salted butter, 200g icing sugar, 20g cocoa powder, 2 tablespoons Camp Coffee Essence, 50g dark chocolate

Pre heat your oven to 180°C and put out your cupcake papers.

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy and a bit fluffy. Sieve the flour, cocoa powder, and coffee granules together. You might have to scrape the coffee granules through the sieve a bit. Add an egg at time to the butter/sugar mix with a spoonful of flour each time, then add the coffee essence and the rest of the flour. Stir through the chocolate chips.

Spoon into the cupcake moulds and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, turning the tray round after about 15 minutes to check. I prefer to bake one tray at a time in the middle of my smaller oven rather than bake two trays one above the other, but if you do that, swop them over half-way.

Cool on a wire rack.

To make the icing, beat the butter until creamy and add the icing sugar and cocoa a spoon at a time, putting a tea towel over your mixer to stop the powdered sugar rising up. Melt the chocolate over a bowl of hot water. Beat the coffee essence into the butter/icing sugar mixture and then add the melted chocolate and beat again to give a creamy fudgy pipeable icing.

Pipe onto the buns using a star nozzle and decorate as you like. Keep in the fridge to set the icing if you are transporting them anywhere.